The Diocese of San Jose is in the midst of a historic demographic shift, with parish populations exploding to the south and east while at the same time leveling or dwindling to the north and west.

In East San Jose and down through southern Santa Clara County, the tremendous influx of mostly young Hispanics, as well as Vietnamese and Filipinos, is straining parishes to the breaking point. The pastors in Morgan Hill and Gilroy are praying for a third parish to be built.

From Palo Alto to Los Altos and Cupertino, however, mostly Asian non-Catholics are moving into the region, leaving few to replace the aging Catholic parishioners who are dying off or moving away. Three Palo Alto parishes have consolidated, and a decade ago, St. William in Los Altos closed its elementary school.

The changing religious and ethnic landscape is posing numerous challenges for Bishop Patrick McGrath. He is undertaking a major assessment of all 52 parishes to determine the best uses of all facilities to the north and west as well as trying to come up with a financial plan to build new parishes to the south and east.

In a first for the diocese, a new “auxiliary bishop” was appointed by the Pope last week to help McGrath navigate the challenges and perform ceremonial duties McGrath is stretched too thin to perform alone. The Rev. Thomas Daly, president of Marin Catholic High School, will be ordained at St. Joseph Cathedral Basilica on May 25.

In an interview last week, McGrath said he welcomes the help. The Hispanic population is growing the fastest in the diocese, he said, “then the Filipinos and Vietnamese are neck and neck. In those communities, they are spilling out the doors.”

To ease the crowding at St. Maria Goretti, in particular, the diocese in the 1990s built Christ the King and St. Francis of Assisi in East San Jose. “We try to build to take the pressure off,” McGrath said, “but the mother church remains jammed anyway.”

Shoulder to shoulder

Despite the population losses to the north, many parishes in the central part of the diocese remain mostly stable. But with the growth in the south and east, the diocese has still been increasing by about 25,000 to 50,000 people a year for the past three or four years. “It’s just a shift in location,” said Penny Warne, director of communications for the Diocese of San Jose.

When the diocese first separated from the San Francisco diocese in 1981, it was home to some 400,000 registered Catholics. Now, there are more than 640,000, one-third the total population of Santa Clara County. By contrast, the San Francisco diocese has some 440,000 registered Catholics.

While an average-size parish in the diocese might have about 3,000 registered families and schedule five Masses from Saturday afternoon through Sunday, St. Maria Goretti is a far different story. The parish on Senter Road near Capitol Expressway serves some 7,000 families attending 12 Masses in three languages during the same time period. On Sunday morning in the rain, the Vietnamese-language Mass was so packed that parishioners spilled into the cramped vestibule and shivered shoulder to shoulder under the outside overhang.

Even the Spanish-language Mass held in a school cafeteria three miles away off Tully Road — an effort to ease overcrowding at St. Maria Goretti a decade ago — parishioners who arrived on time had no choice but to stand in the back.

At St. Maria Goretti alone, the ripple effects of overcrowding are staggering: group weddings every year or two for 20 to 30 couples at a time; upward of a dozen baptisms held at the same Spanish-language service nearly every Saturday; and before major holiday Masses, the importation of 20 priests to hear confessions for two nights solid. Weekly church bulletins are translated into four languages: Vietnamese, Tagalog, Spanish and English.

Difficult logistics

At St. Catherine’s in Morgan Hill, a community along with Gilroy that has seen double-digit growth in the past decade, the church seats 500. But at the 12:15 p.m. Spanish-language Mass on Sundays, some 700 to 900 parishioners often overflow outside.

“It helps that there are lots of children sitting on laps,” said Rev. Mark Arnzen, the pastor of St. Catherine’s. “The largest growth we have is in the Spanish-speaking population. Like other parts of California, they are younger with more children.”

Two-thirds of the roughly 250 baptisms each year are for Spanish-speaking families. The parish elementary school has a waiting list for its classrooms, which hold 34 students per grade. Some 500 children are part of the two-year First Communion preparation classes on the church and school grounds.

“We have to use the nursery for a classroom, the rectory meeting room as a classroom,” Arnzen said. “It’s a wonderful expression, but it’s a frustration for parents and teachers. It’s sometimes difficult to work out everything logistically.”

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409.

SAN JOSE DIOCESE52 parishes640,000 registered CatholicsAt St. Maria Goretti, 12 Masses are performed from Saturday afternoon through Sunday, in Vietnamese, Spanish and English.

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to NBA Finals. In a video that went viral, she captured runners paying tribute to a World War II veteran. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.

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